A MIDWINTER'S TALE
(IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER)
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2
Director and Writer Kenneth Branagh's A MIDWINTER'S TALE (called IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER in Britain) is a wonderful celebration of the pure joy of acting. It is full of exuberant energy and literally bursts at the seams with happiness. It is a comedy that kept a smile on my face from start to finish. Since one of my least favorite movie genres is comedy especially British comedy as this one is, I was really surprised at how much I thoroughly enjoyed this film. My only problem was that I had to make myself stopping laughing out loud sometimes so that I would not miss any of the excellent dialog, and this was sometime extremely difficult.
Opening to the strains of "Why must the show go on, oh mammy", the picture tells the story of a director named Joe Harper (Michael Maloney) who wants to produce and star in a production of Hamlet. He auditions actors and actresses for the play, and these auditions are perhaps the best part of the movie. The thespians he recruits appear to be the dregs of the acting world, and each audition is hilarious. In Tom Newman's (Nicholas Farrell) interview for the part he explains to Joe that, "Hamlet isn't just Hamlet. Hamlet is me. Hamlet is Bosnia. Hamlet is the desk. Hamlet is the air. Hamlet is my grandmother." The actors appear to share a single trait - they are hungry and need the work badly. Joe solves the problem by hiring all of them.
His "friend, agent, and personal investor" Margaretta D'Arcy (Joan Collins) arranges for them to do the play in a dying town called Hope, of which it had little. They setup shop in an abandoned church that has been taken over by developers. They will live there, eat all of their meals together there, and open the play in a few weeks on Christmas Eve. A constant subplot is will they sell any tickets or will they go bust and be thrown out before opening night.
The best part of the film other than the script and the directing is Michael Maloney's acting. He is so infectiously happy and naive that you begin to feel sorry for him since the actors he has to work with are the pits. Eventually they will become a team and more than that a family, and it is this considerable camaraderie that gives the audience such a warm feeling of joy.
Nina Raymond (Julia Sawalha), who plays Ophelia, is not optimistic on their chances of getting kids out on Christmas Eve to see Hamlet. She asks, what are we going to tell them, "Hello kids, do stop watching The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and see a four hundred year old play about depressed aristocrats." I nearly fell over in my seat when she delivered that line.
All of Joe's happiness finally begins to crumble when opening night draws nigh and the play is not coming together. His emotions explode, and he tells the cast, "Hamlet is a loser led by the chief loser, yours truly." Branagh creates Joe as a director with whom the audience easily empathizes. You want such an incredibly energetic, albeit naive, guy to succeed no matter how small the odds.
After initial bickering, the cast finally comes together. When Joe's sister Molly (Hetta Charnley) is worried about forgetting her lines, Carnforth (Gerard Horan) advises her to do what he always does. He tells her, "If I forget my lines in Shakespeare, I always say, 'crouch we here a while' and wait."
The casts thinks the set decorator is named Vag (Celia Imrie). Carnforth tells her he is glad she uses her nickname. She then corrects them telling them that her name is Fadge. She lets Molly call her Pher, which Molly says she appreciates but that Pher is even harder to say than Fadge. Fadge is a great quirky little character who keeps the cast guessing as to what the set will look like. Eventually they come to believe she is such a minimalist that the set may have no external manifestations at all. I will not spoil it by describing what she decides. It is major funny.
The cast in the show is great from top to bottom. I can only scratch the surface with this review. As well as the ones above, there is Henry (Richard Briers), Vernon (Mark Hadfield), Nancy (Jennifer Saunders), Terry (John Sessions), Tim (James White), and Mortimer (Robert Hines) among others.
The movie is filmed in a low contrast and a little hazy black and white by Roger Lanser. I thought this look worked very well with the material. The sets by Tim Harvey and the costumes by Caroline Harris are suitably hokey.
A MIDWINTER'S TALE flies by at 1:39 thanks to crisp editing by Neil Farrell. It is incorrectly rated R for a tiny bit of bad language. There is no sex, nudity, or violence of any kind. I would class the film as a mild PG-13 and would have no trouble taking a kid of any age who was genuinely interested in the theater to it. This is an energetic, funny, but not slapstick comedy. It makes you feel good to be alive and reminds you what is special about the acting profession. I recommend it to everyone highly and award it *** 1/2.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: February 27, 1996
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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